Chapter 10

As I grabbed the spare key from the key holder under a lawn gnome at my house, Becky looked inside the window. "Wow, your family must be rich."

"Not really." I said, opening the door as we set our bags down on the couch, Becky pulling out a file from her bag and climbing the stairs to my bedroom. "Standard housing for people who work at the Treatorian Collective."

"The only thing standard about this place is the boxes in the hallway." Becky said, looking down at the boxes on the ground.

"We haven’t really had a chance to completely unpack everything on the higher levels yet." I explained, walking into my bedroom.

"I see that goes for your bedroom too." Becky said, sitting down at the edge of my bed and gripping the file folder tightly. She wasn’t exactly wrong. There were two stacks of boxes in the corner of my room and two giant boxes in front of my bookshelf that had my grandmother’s collection of paperbacks inside. The only bit of personality in here was the baby blue sheets covering my bed, contrasting with the neon orange walls that Dad promised he would repaint before we moved in here, but we never got the chance to because of Mom's insistence to move in as fast as possible.

"Yeah… We still need to try and repaint the walls. I’m thinking dark blue and then painting stars on it." I explained, pulling up a box to sit down on. "Anyway, what stuff do you have on Mr. Herbstriet?"

"Get ready to have your mind blown." Becky said excitedly, giving a piece of paper with a bunch of different numbers written on it.

"Becky, I didn’t ask you to come in here for help with math."

"It's not math, it’s measurements." Becky explained, pointing to the different measurements on the paper. "I took Mr. Herbstreit’s measurements, height, weight, that sort of thing, and compared it to Brain Dump’s measurements from the last time they updated his profile on the Treatorian Collectve’s website."

I studied the paper, my eyes furrowing in confusion. "Are Mr. Herbstriet’s measurements real?"

"I was taking Home-Ec last year and I tricked him into giving these to me for a male clothing unit. I was actually using them for this comparison."

"But… These are all off." I said, looking up and down the list. "Mr. Herbstreit is taller, Brain Dump is heavier and skinnier, Herbstreit also has longer arms, if they were the same person these would be identical."

"There’s more." Becky said, looking in her file again and pulling out another piece of paper. “Look at this.

It was a zoomed in picture of Brain Dump's neck where his mask was coming up. This was alarming. "Why is Brain Dump’s skin lighter than Mr. Herbstreit’s?"

"Exactly!" Becky said excitedly. "This whole folder is filled with weird stuff like that. Skin color discrepancies, hair texture differences, I dug up everything I could about Brain Dump since something felt off about Herbstreit since the moment I met him. Why are you asking about this anyway?"

"You’re gonna think I’m insane."

"You are literally talking to the person who has a crime folder in their backpack. Try me."

"Okay, so we were watching this video in history and Brain Dump was in it. He was signing the Peaceful Supers Treaty-"

"After The Gravity so that supers could function in society and be heroes, but also banning teenage superheroes like in the comic books of yore because of the whole organization clause, I know. Your point being?"

"Brain Dump signed it with his right hand."

Becky hesitated for a second before giving me a confused look. "And?"

"Herbstreit is left handed." I said as Becky’s eyes widened, then she scrambled for a pencil I had lying down on my bed. "Are you telling me that in the year you have been practically stalking this man-"

"I have not been stalking him, I have been merely observing him and gaining obscure details."

"You are telling me that you haven’t once thought to look at their dominant hand to see if there was a discrepancy there?"

"You know what Anneliese," Becky said, writing the note on her paper as she looked up at me. "You are my new partner in crime."

"Wait, what?"

"It’s official. We are gonna expose this guy together."

"Okay..." I said uncertainly.

Dad walked up to my bedroom, knocking on the door as he opened it. "How’s the study group doing?"

Becky gave me a confused look as I smiled up a Dad, an idea already forming in my head. "It’s going fine Dad, but I’m afraid we’ve hit a bit of a snag with our group project for History."

"What kind of snag?" Dad asked, leaning against the doorframe. He took the bait.

"So our history project is to give a report on the background of a particular hero. Unfortunately, Becky and I got Brain Dump-"

"Why is that unfortunate?" Dad asked, confusion in his voice. "Brain Dump is one of the coolest heroes ever!"

"Well, it’s unfortunate because his identity is unknown, unlike most of the members of the SNL, so the only stuff we have on him are the stuff that your job posted about him and that doesn’t have a lot of what we need for the project. We’ve been searching for more information on him for at least an hour and we have zip."

"What kind of stuff do you need to know?"

"Basic stuff." Becky said, going along with my ruse. "Age, ethnicity, high school, town he grew up in."

"I got an idea!" Dad said happily, snapping his fingers. "Since I’m the head of security, I get access to the records that have the hero’s personal information in it. I know that they let students access those records occasionally, so maybe I can convince my bosses to let you down there to look at Brain Dump’s info for your project."

"Really?" I asked innocently.

"That would be awesome Mr. Andrews. Thank you so much." Becky said happily.

"I will talk to my people about that tomorrow. In the meantime, you two wash up for dinner. I am making my world famous chicken carbonara for dinner and you are gonna want to have as much as you can."

As Dad walked out of the room, Becky looked over at me and gave me a quiet round of applause. "Nicely done, Andrews. I am impressed."

"The trick is to not try it often." I explained as Becky closed her file folder, smiling at me as she did so. "The more often you do it, the quicker the parents catch on. You just gotta sprinkle it in every once in a while to get your parents to do it."

"That was some seriously quick thinking though. How’d you figure out that plan so fast?"

"Well, I figured that if any place had info on Brain Dump, it would be the Treatorian Collective. Pair that with the knowledge that my father works there, and boom. Foolproof plan."

"How often are we gonna talk about this though? I tried voicing my suspicions to everyone else in the group and they didn't listen to me. They probably thought I was taking drugs or something because of how freaking crazy it sounds."

"Did you tell everyone?"

"Yeah. Callum, Keisha, Trayvon, everyone."

"Not Edward?"

Becky’s eyes widened. "I don’t know, Anna. He seems like a nice guy, but I sense that he’s keeping something from the group. I don’t trust him as much as I trust you."

"How do you know I’m not keeping anything from the group?" I asked cautiously.

"Oh, I know you are." Becky said, shrugging helplessly. "But I bet that you’re hiding it for a good reason. I don’t get that vibe from Edward. I mean, nobody transfers to the school during the last two weeks of the school year and not have something to hide."

"He transferred in at the last two weeks?"

"Yeah. It was around the time that that Alexander Winchester guy took over in England. He told Callum he had powers and he’s been in the group ever since."

"He can’t be that bad, Becky. I mean, he is helping me figure out my powers. He can’t be that horrible of a person if he’s trying to help."

Becky seemed to weigh her options, rolling her eyes. "Okay, good point. So do we want to tell him about this?"

"It’s worth a shot to have one more person on our side to help us investigate. If we have three, we at least have a nice triangle instead of a line. Always good to have a complete shape."

Becky laughed. "Good point."

Dinner was soon underway, Dad asking Becky a bunch of questions about her family and what life was like here until it got to the inevitable questions. "So… Becky, do you… Are you-"

"Yes Dad, she’s in Y.A.K.S. with me." I said, taking a bite of pasta.

"Right on! So… What’s your superpower, if you don’t mind me asking."

Becky tilted her head. "He knows you have superpowers?"

"Who do you think ultimately convinced me to join?"

Becky laughed to herself. "I can duplicate myself, but the drawback is that if one clone goes down, then all of us go down."

"Duplication is the one power I know I wanted when I was a kid. Must say, I am a bit jealous."

"Trust me, duplication isn’t all it’s cracked up to be." Becky said, laughing to herself.

"How’d you get your power anyway?" I asked.

"Not that exciting of a story." Becky said, shrugging as she continued to eat. "One of my crazy aunts broke into our apartment above my mother’s hair salon, and everybody in my family started yelling at me and wanting me to be everywhere at once, protecting my younger brothers, stopping the bleeding from my father’s knife wound, call 911, stuff like that until it got to the point where I literally split into five different versions of myself."

"How’d you get your power?" Dad asked, giving me a cautious look.

I shrugged. "No idea. I think Zelena and I were walking home from a football game in the middle of this storm or something since you and Mom were out of town, but I’m not entirely sure what happened after that since I woke up in the middle of the road."

"Curiouser and curiouser." Becky said, nodding in understandment.

Mom teleported behind her, causing Becky to jump in her seat once Mom spoke. I looked over at Mom and noticed that she was carrying a pet carrier. "I’m home!"

"Hi honey..." Dad said uncertainly.

"You good Becky?" I asked cautiously.

"Yeah, just forgot that your Mom can teleport." Becky said, nodding as she took another sip of water.

"Hey Mom, what’s in the pet carrier?" I asked cautiously.

"Oh, just a little surprise for you since you’ve been such a trooper recently." Mom said as the thing in the pet carrier barked.

"Jane, you didn’t!" Dad said nervously.

"I did!" Mom said happily.

"Do you know what breed of dog it is?" I asked, grabbing Becky’s plate and my own as I set them in the sink.

"Nope!"

"Mom..." I said exhaustedly, walking over to the pet carrier and seeing the mall dog inside. I sighed heavily, looking up at Mom. "This is a husky."

"It is? Well, who knew!"

"What’s the dog’s name?" Becky asked, bending down as Mom bent down and opening up the cage as the dog ran into my arms.

"Wasn’t named when I got him. I figured that Anneliese could choose the name."

"I know the perfect name for him!" I said, picking up the dog and holding onto the small dog. "Koda."

"I thought for sure you were gonna name him Thunder." Becky teased.

"He just looks like a cute little bear because he’s so fluffy."

Becky looked between Mom and Dad, grabbing her bag. "I think I’m gonna go..."

"Yeah… Good idea." I said, looking over at Mom and Dad, keeping Koda close to my chest. "I’m gonna bring Koda outside since Becky and I need to talk about something for our project. We’re probably gonna meet up tomorrow to talk about it again."

"So you won’t need a ride back home tomorrow?" Mom asked.

"Or tomorrow morning." Becky said as we walked out the door. "We have a lot to talk about."

"Okay..." Mom said gently as the door closed.

I smiled at Becky nervously. "I am so sorry you had to witness the beginning tension of a fight. I promise you, they are not usually like that."

"It’s cool. I’ve been witness to many fights myself." Becky said, shrugging as she opened the driver’s side door. "So are you gonna text Edward to meet us at a fast food place tomorrow so that we can talk about the Brain Dump situation?"

"Does it matter what place?"

"As long as it isn’t Mexican. I have enough of that at my normal house as it is. I just want a break from my regular food."

"Understandable. I’ll text you the place later."

"Cool. See ya tomorrow." Becky said, closing the car door and waving goodbye.

Koda barked at Becky as we walked back inside, quickly grabbing my backpack and walking upstairs. I got out my homework, setting Koda on my bed. "I am sorry you had to hear that, buddy."

"It’s fine." Koda said, curling up in a ball.

I froze, looking directly at Koda. "I’m sorry… Did you just talk?"

"Do dogs not normally speak human?"

"No!"

"Huh… Maybe I’m an exception?"

I closed my school work and gave Koda a confused look. "Have you… Been able to talk since you were born?"

"Just about. My mom said that it was some genetic abnormality like the ones that the humans have."

"So Mom accidentally got me a superpowered dog. Great." I sighed, looking over at Koda. "Okay Koda, is it cool that I call you Koda?"

"Yeah! I like the name Koda!"

"One guideline: no talking in front of other humans unless I give you specific permission to do otherwise. People won’t react normally to talking creatures. Heck, I’m freaking out on the inside."

"But I thought people having powers was normal."

"Yeah… It’s normal for humans. Dogs and other furry animals that walk on four legs, not so much. Just promise me you won’t talk around other humans without permission, okay?"

Koda nodded. "Okay Anneliese."

"You can just call me Anna. Most people do." I said, smiling at Koda happily.

Koda jumped up and down on my bed excitedly. "I’m just happy to have a family!"

"You and me both Koda." I said, going back to my schoolwork, my mind drifting back to the school day despite how much I didn’t want it to go there. "You and me both."

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